13Jan 17

Greetings! I’m the Toilet Duck and I’m here to solve all your problems! It’s easy (*quack*) when I’m on your team. With my catchy tunes and the help of my squadron of all-terrain bathroom fixtures I will defeat the rebel bacteria menace that would otherwise evolve into a terrifying ‘super’ ‘bug’ and bring civilisation to its knees. My global presence means there’s nowhere for rebel scum to hide! I’ll even plant a tracking device under the rim of your toilet seat to make sure they don’t get away. Bye bacteria, bye worries!

Reassuring words from Toilet Duck, there. On to numbers #30-#21!

30. Rihanna ft Drake – “Work”

I thought we might get away with avoiding Drake in this poll but like the human papilloma virus he just keeps popping up, doesn’t he? “If you had a twin I’d still choose you” Blimey Drake, am I meant to feel ROMANCED by that statement? At least RiRi’s bits are all at the beginning so you can stop the track early if you like. This also means that Rihanna has now won the Most Heard Blaring Out Of Car Windows In Sydenham High Street Award two years running.

29. Zarah Larsson – “Lush Life”

Breezy, carefree, holiday romance bubblegum with about twice as many hooks as most people bother with these days. I feel incredibly foolish for only hearing this for the first time in November. The video is very Clarissa Explains It All, and no worse for it.

=27. Lizzo – “Good As Hell”

Most likely candidate to soundtrack Boots’ 2017 Xmas advert. That might sound pretty damning but if you’d written a chorus about getting yourself dolled up then surely its cash-cow potential would be at the back of your mind?

=27. Savages – “Adore”

Moody noir-guitar ballad from Sausages. There are quiet bits AND loud bits! Whatever next. Well actually, I can fully imagine ‘next’ being a BBC4 trailer for a Hungarian crime drama in this case.

=25. Beyonce & The Dixie Chicks – “Daddy Lessons”

The only Beyoncé track on this list available on Spotify! B and the girls rollock their way through some advice from Pa, not all of which I’d recommend, depending on firearms restrictions in your area.

=25. Beyonce – “All Night”

If you are reading this I will assume you have some awareness of Lemonade. This particular track somehow manages to capture the feeling of enormous scale, graft and ambition that Beyonce’s applied to (and achieved with) this project – it’s like the the song she’ll walk on to for her inauguration speech in 2025 (well, it’d either be this or Halo).

24. Britney Spears – “If I’m Dancing”

Britters! Welcome back, me old mucker. The clip clop beat sounds about 5 years old now but our cyborg queen is timeless as ever. I can’t find this on Youtube but this version sounds most like the one on Spotify? I guess the kids download it straight into their cerebral cortex these days? Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

=22. Christine & The Queens – “iT”

One of my favourites of 2016, a year in which you could hear a song about a determined and sympathetic trans* protagonist playing in a branch of Pret. Still a long way to go of course – their macaroni cheese STILL contains awful cauliflower despite my repeated protests to their twitter account.

=22. The Avalanches – “Because I’m Me”

Ah, the 2000s. Isn’t it? Wasn’t it? If you liked the title track from Since I Left You then there’s a good chance of this being up your street too.

21. Tiggs Da Author ft Lady Leshurr – “Run”

More than a whiff of a Janelle Monae/Big Boi collaboration to this post-surf-revival jiggle – they could have written it for all I know, as outrageously Tiggs doesn’t have his own wikipedia page. My favourite bit is where Lesh gives a quick nod to General Levy. (The Avalanches video has better breakdancing though, IMHO.)

Next up: we broach the top 20!

Comments

Work – This one missed the cut for my top 20, but hey! It’s still a pretty marvellous thing. Hopefully we haven’t seen the last of Rihanna in this year’s reader’s poll. Can’t really say the same for Drake.

Lush Life – One that might have suffered from overexposure for me. Still quite a powerful earworm. For a few months, this was inescapable.

Good As Hell – Yeah, this one has some potential. Not sure gettin’ yer hair and nails did is the path to happiness long-term, but I’m not really in a position to judge.

Daddy Lessons/All Night – I chose to hold back and select one track from Lemonade for my list. I could have populated my list entirely with tracks from that album and had no regrets.

If I’m Dancing – I feel a bit underwhelmed by this, but I have found a lot of her latter-day stuff tends to grow on me, eventually.

iT – In a word, classy. I chose another one of C&TQ’s output for my list.

Because I’m Me – Oddly enough, I didn’t get round to checking out their comeback. Having heard this, I wish I had. So much joy!

Run – Ooh! This was featured in an advert, the product escapes my mind but this is really quite marvellous. Cars of my youth doing doughnuts in the dust! Big tick! Might have made my 20 on another day.

I voted for none of these, but know most of them. Not the Britney song, though, which is pretty good, isn’t it? Beyoncé + the Dixies was one of the big disappointments of the year for me – sounded like a fantastic idea on paper, doesn’t really work in practice to my ears.

Do Christine & The Queens remind anyone else of early solo Peter Gabriel?

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